Taking Up Space

Take a look at this blog entry I found about contemporary worship lyrics. You’ll either be laughing or crying; I can’t make up my mind. The choice of “Air Supply” as a point of comparison is a stroke of genius.

In my Sunday School class, we recently engaged in a discussion of Jesus’ challenge to would-be followers to “take up your cross.” This story is an interesting sidebar to that discussion, a recording of which can be found HERE.

According to tradition, Andrew—who was Peter’s brother and the first follower of Jesus—preached the gospel in the region North of the Black Sea and in various parts of Greece. His life ended in Northern Greece in a city called Patras. He was crucified by Aegeas, the governor of the region at the time.

Andrew was a diligent preacher of the gospel and had brought many people to faith in Christ. When Aegeas the governor heard about this, he came to Patras to put an end to the Christian movement there. To do this, he enforced a legal requirement that everyone worship the Roman gods by making sacrifices to them. Andrew immediately decided to resist Aegeas and went to address him directly.

“It would be wise for someone who judges men,” he said, “to know the One who is his Judge—the One who lives in heaven. And once you have known Him, you will worship Him, since He is the One true God. In so doing, this judge of men will turn his mind away from false gods and blind idols.”

These words from Andrew angered Aegeas. “Are you the same Andrew that overthrew the temple of the gods?” he demanded. “Are you the same Andrew that goes around persuading men to believe in superstitions which Rome has abolished? I have been commanded to put an end to such teaching.”

Andrew replied by saying that it was indeed a fact that the Roman authorities did not understand the truth. “The Son of God came from heaven into the world for man’s sake,” he said, “He taught us that these idols you honor as gods are not only not gods, but are actually cruel demons. They are enemies to mankind, and they teach people nothing except things which offend God. As a result, these people fall into all kinds of wickedness, and when they die, they have nothing to offer to God but evil deeds.”

As you might imagine, the governor was not appeased by what Andrew had to say. Instead, he commanded Andrew to quit teaching and preaching these things immediately. If he refused, he would be fastened to the cross at once.

But Andrew did refuse to change his mind and replied to the threat of crucifixion by saying, “I would not preach the honor and glory of the cross if I feared the death of the cross.”

So the sentence of death was pronounced, and Andrew was taken away to be crucified for denying the religion of the Roman gods. Because crucifixion was an especially cruel and painful death, men who faced it often lost their minds from fear. They would frequently faint when they saw the cross. Andrew, however, didn’t even pale. Instead, out of his deep love for Christ, he spoke these words that strike the heart like sparks of fire.

“O cross!” he declared, “O cross most welcome and long anticipated! I come to you with a willing mind, with joy and desire. Since I am a follower and a student of the One who died on you, I have always loved you and sought to embrace you.”

And so Andrew gave his life for the love of Christ.

Paintings of the martrydom of Andrew (like this one by Bartolome Esteban Murillo) always depict an X-shaped cross. Tradition says that the Romans rotated the traditional cross onto its side as an insult. This is also the origin of the Scottish flag, depicted above, known as “St. Andrew’s Cross.”

I promised to review this book on my blog in exchange for a free copy, so let me begin by saying thanks to the author and publisher for that opportunity. I’m not enthusiastic about Off-Road Disciplines (I don’t think I would have read it had I come across it in a bookstore), but I appreciate what I perceive to be the motivation of its author, which is his love for the Body of Christ and those who minister in it. While I share that love, I think this book simply doesn’t fulfill its promise. “Missional leaders,” Dr. Creps writes in the introduction, “see the world through the eyes of Jesus.” The rest of the book, however, seems aimed mostly at helping leaders to see Jesus through the eyes of the world. So while not wanting to be simply pragmatic, Off-Road Disciplines ends up being ultimately pragmatic, seemingly built on three faulty assumptions:

The first is: Relevance is king. The “truth” Creps is most concerned about is the cultural environment of the Church. There is a lot here about what we can do to understand and fit into what he calls our “tiempos mixtos” or mixed times. There is very little about how the message of the gospel might address and challenge contemporary culture. For example, in his chapter on Reverse Mentoring, Dr. Creps notes that there is plenty of opportunity for older folks to learn from younger folks, especially when it comes to utilizing the technological gadgets of our day. Nothing wrong with that; the scripture calls the Church to a relational strategy of ministry. But we also need to take a prophetic stance—what Vanhoozer calls a disputational stance—against the ills of human culture. So while I get to know young people who are technologized, I’m also concerned about how technology may be dehumanizing them in the way it allows them to escape the sort of face-to-face interaction that real discipleship requires or in the way it facilitates the development of virtual personalities while ignoring the development of character.

The Christian message unavoidably criticizes human beings and the societies we form. If we ignore that reality in order to attract people to Christianity, we must inevitably either spring the trap, at which point people would justifiably feel misled, or continue to let people believe in an uncritical gospel, which is no gospel at all. Dr. Creps occasionally gives hints that he is aware of this problem. The chapter on “Reflection” is a good example, but even there, theological reflection is ultimately aimed at ministry effectiveness rather than personal knowledge of God in Christ and the resulting worship.

This leads me to the second bad assumption: The mission is being “missional.” After reading through Off-Road Disciplines, I find it troubling that I can’t remember a clear statement of what the mission of the Church or of the Christian is, even though this book is about being missional. The problem here is that the mission of the Church is quite particular and it has particular propositional content. The Christian and the Church are called to embody a particular message. The ultimate purpose of that message is not the redemption of people, but the redemption of people into proper worship of the true God. John Piper makes this point most excellently, by the way, in his book on mission called Let the Nations Be Glad: The Supremacy of God in Missions. Our problem is not that we are inadequate in our attention to and understanding of human cultures so much as it is that we are inadequate in our attention to, understanding of, and appreciation for God himself as revealed in the person of Jesus Christ himself.

One might respond that these things are acknowledged as given, and simply not within the scope of Off-Road Disciplines. This implies what seems to me to be a third bad assumption: Ordinary Christians in America have been well taught the content of their faith. Perhaps Dr. Creps knows better, but my own observation is that in spite of unprecedented opportunity, our generation is as theologically illiterate as any in history. This is the result of the pragmatic orientation of 20^th century evangelicalism, an orientation which this book does little to correct. This is the problem I have with most of the “emergent” stuff I’ve read. It is critical of the pragmatic approaches of the Seeker Sensitive movement, or of the Church-growth movement before that, but fails to recognize that it is simply the latest version of the pragmatic Church.

Finally, I have to say that there’s nothing particularly “off-road” about Off-Road Disciplines. All of these things seem to me to be better described as ordinary tactics of biblical disciple-making. The principal advice—not the only advice—in this book is: spend some time getting to know people you plan to communicate with. That’s good advice, but there’s nothing radical about it. I found that as I read this book, I kept hoping for the fresh insight the title seems to promise. I’m sorry to say that hope remains unsatisfied.

You can now get recordings of the class I teach at Community Bible Church by clicking the “Audio” link at the top of this page. In addition to the audio, you can also download PDFs of the class handouts.

The current class is called The Challenges of Discipleship, which explores seven things Jesus explicitly required from those who would follow him. Jesus did not adopt the normal approach of making himself as appealing as possible in order to attract the largest possible crowd. He selects his own followers; he does not market his gospel and then worry if anyone will show up. In fact, when one reads these seven statements, Jesus seems to be actively chasing people off, regarding half-hearted, in-it-for-themselves followers with disdain. If Jesus were not Lord and God, these demands he makes could only be regarded as insane at best, if not downright cruel.

This makes me wonder if the Church is demanding enough of those who claim to be disciples. These days, the Church looks a lot like a simple customer service organization, marketing its spiritual consulting services to help individuals develop their own do-it-yourself religions. Christianity is just one more path to self actualization. This is not the life to which Jesus called Peter, Andrew, James and John. He called them to love him more than their mothers, to take his word as the final word on any subject, to say no to their own desires and ambitions, to adopt his agenda of suffering servanthood, to imitate him as a way of life, to give up every earthly possession, and to live in transparent loving communion with each other.

Of course, this is the only path to self actualization, but it requires completely giving up the goal of self actualization in favor of what we might call Christ actualization. If you’re going to follow Jesus, he requires you to relinquish the idea of inventing your own form of spirituality. In fact he requires you to relinquish the position of governing your own life in every aspect, in favor of his governing it. If I adopt this place, Jesus will teach and train me to be the fully human being I was created to be, living in proper relationship to my Creator, to my fellow-humans, and to the rest of his created universe.